Woman

My momma told me that on the day I was born my father said, he wished that the lips of my vagina would tighten into testicles and that my clitoris should have grown into a penis. His first born should not have been a woman, but a man.

"Woman?" And he would laugh as if the word itself was an abomination. "Woe unto man!"

I was never accepted and for the first three days of my life my father refused to hold me.

When I was carried home I was treated like a boy. My father, being the single provider of our family, never allowed my mother to buy dresses for me. My room was painted blue and decorated in 'masculine' colors.

As I grew older my father had me active in many sports, sometimes I would even end up on a boy's team because I played too 'hard' to be on the girl's. I hated it, but would never say a word seeing to 'I had to be the son my father never had'. I had to be strong.

I thought it would have stopped when my mother gave birth to twins when I was nine, a boy and girl, and my father finally had a son, but it didn't.

As my brother grew, he never showed interest in sports or things other boys his age showed interest in. Instead he rather play video games, read a book or try out for a school play. Needless to say, my father barely acknowledged him.

My sister was a complete girl. She liked dresses, heels, make up....anything 'girl' related. She was prim and proper, just like momma and hated getting dirty. And I hated getting dirty too but, I kept my mouth shut.

While momma taught my sister how to bake and cook and clean and wash, my father thought me how to pitch a baseball and run correctly and fix a carburetor and mow the lawn. My brother? Half of the time we didn't know where he was nor did he care to be found.

On Sundays, however, my brother and sister would spend the entire day with dad and I with mom. Whenever she asked, "Watcha wanna do?" I would always answer back with the exact same thing, "I wanna learn how to bake and cook." And she would smile down on me so brightly, stretching her tight brown skin. I never saw the pity in her eyes, so I always

I cooked well and baked even better. My pastries were always sweet and I earned the nick-name 'Sugar'.

When I turned eighteen and graduated from high school all the years of coaching in countless sports from my father paid off when I was given a track scholarship to attend UCLA. I was grateful of the scholarship but, would rather be in a kitchen learning culinary arts. I went anyways because if I ever told my father I wanted to be a chef he would never support my dreams and refuse to pay for other expenses.

After years of pre and post graduate studies of psychology, I became a psychologist and opened a practice along with a friend.

A year later I married a man and became the woman my father always wanted me to be.

A Strong woman. Confident woman. Independent woman. Terrified woman. Weak woman. A woman putting up a façade.

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Re-publishing this story on Wattpad.